What Comes After the “End of the Left”? Japan May Need Another LDP

I recently saw the news that the Centrist Reform Alliance, a moderate left-wing group formed only a few months earlier, had dissolved.

Watching Japanese politics lately, I am once again struck by how bad the opposition parties are at holding themselves together.

As an election approaches, calls for “opposition unity” begin. A new party or political initiative emerges, promising that this time it will create a force capable of replacing the government.

Before long, however, the disagreements begin.

They disagree on national security, nuclear power, and the Constitution. They argue about whom to join, and once they have joined, they argue that they cannot possibly work with such people.

Then they split apart.

After watching this cycle for long enough, it starts to feel less like political news and more like a seasonal tradition.

A Party Cannot Be Built Entirely from People Who Insist They Are Right

The more a political group values its principles, the harder compromise becomes.

On questions of values—especially the Constitution, national security, nuclear power, and human rights—the moment someone compromises, they are accused of abandoning their principles.

The result is a gathering of people who each have an issue on which they refuse to yield.

If everyone says, “This is the one thing I will never compromise on,” they will naturally fail to unite.

The same is true in a company meeting. If everyone arrives with a non-negotiable demand, nothing can be decided. Politics is not exempt from this rule.

A political party is not a study group devoted to political philosophy. It is an organization that must win elections, create budgets, pass legislation, and run the government.

Is it better to uphold a perfect set of principles and remain in opposition forever, or accept a 70-percent compromise and take office?

That difference matters.

The LDP Covers Too Much of the Political Field

The governing Liberal Democratic Party, or LDP, poses another challenge for Japan’s opposition.

Japanese politics is difficult to understand if the LDP is treated simply as a right-wing party.

It is conservative on national security and constitutional issues, yet it expands social welfare, distributes subsidies to regional communities, and protects agriculture. Within the party itself, there are politicians ranging from staunch conservatives to those closer to the liberal side.

In short, the LDP covers an extraordinarily broad political range.

Call for better welfare, and the LDP will do that too.

Call for more support for families raising children, and it will do that as well.

Call for stronger defense capabilities, and it will do that too.

Even when an opposition party proposes a policy, the LDP absorbs a considerable part of it.

That leaves the opposition facing one difficult question:

“What, then, makes you fundamentally different from the LDP?”

Japanese Voters Are Not Neatly Divided into Left and Right Either

Ordinary voters are not neatly divided into the political right and left in the first place.

They may believe that Japan needs strong defenses but still hate war. They want social security to remain in place but do not want higher taxes. They want companies to grow while also protecting vulnerable people.

This may sound contradictory, but that is what ordinary people are like.

Politics is not an academic examination. People do not need to make every one of their beliefs ideologically consistent.

When a party becomes too ideologically pure, however, it moves away from those ordinary voters.

In the end, they return to the same conclusion:

“I suppose the LDP will do.”

Perhaps the LDP’s greatest strength is not that it inspires passionate support, but that it can accommodate this enormous group of voters who think it is simply good enough.

Japan May Need Another LDP

That does not mean the LDP should be the only viable choice.

Any organization becomes complacent when it has no competitor. If losing an election or making a serious mistake can always be excused with “There is no other party we can trust to govern,” the ruling party could hardly ask for a more comfortable environment.

Should Japan, then, create a party that is the complete opposite of the LDP?

I think the answer may be the reverse.

Japan could use another centrist to moderate-conservative party with broadly similar fundamental policies.

A transfer of power would not reverse the country’s basic direction by 180 degrees. Voters would nevertheless be able to say:

“This time, let us give the other party a chance.”

Rather than having the right and left fight an all-out battle over competing visions of the nation, two parties could compete over a simpler question:

“Which one can run the country slightly better?”

That may not sound inspiring, but we do not need politics to offer us a dream every time. It is enough for the government to function properly.

Japan Needs an Opposition Party That People Can Trust to Govern

For that reason, I am not particularly interested in whether “the left is finished.”

The real problem is the continued belief that there is ultimately no party other than the LDP that can be trusted to govern.

Democracy does not need an opposition party with ideologically beautiful principles.

It needs an opposition party that can genuinely take power.

What Japanese politics lacks may not be a party farther to the right or farther to the left.

It needs a party that makes ordinary people think:

“If I do not want the LDP, I can safely entrust the government to this party instead.”

That sounds like a remarkably low bar.

Yet Japanese politics has continued to trip over it for decades.